Back to the future within three months, claim Russian scientists

Russian mathematicians have claimed that man could actually travel through a tunnel between present and future within three months.

The Russians, while referring to ''atom-smashing'' tests by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), claim that the energy produced by forcing tiny particles to collide at close to the speed of light could open the door to visitors from the future.

Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich of Moscow's Steklov Mathematical Institute believe that nuclear scientists would carry out experiments in May in underground tunnels in Geneva which aim to recreate the conditions in the first billionth of a second after the ''Big Bang'', Daily Mail reported.

According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, any large amounts of matter or energy will distort the space and time that surrounds it.

If the energy or mass is large enough, it is claimed that time can be distorted so much that it folds back on itself - creating a wormhole, or time tunnel, between the present and the future.

However, Britain's leading experts in particle physics, Brian Cox dismissed the Russian claims as ''nothing more than a good science fiction story''.

''Cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere are far more energetic than anything we can produce. They have been occurring for five billion years, and no time travellers have appeared'' he said.

''Stephen Hawking has suggested that any future theory of quantum gravity will probably close this possibility off, not least because the universe usually proceeds in a sane way, and time travel into the past isn't sane,'' he added.